Note to readers: “2200 Blues” is a novel in progress, and each chapter is an early draft in its unfolding journey. Your thoughts and reactions are invaluable, guiding its evolution and refinement. 2200 Blues © 2024 by G.R. Nanda. All rights reserved.
The rest of the Thraíha hurriedly followed a procession around the bulky shafts crisscrossing the open-air roof, heading back to the pulley platform. Farrul was nowhere to be seen, likely hidden amongst the bustling Thraíha.
“Chung jurra! Chung jurra!” shouted many of the Thraíha. Their voices were lost to Nickel as the sound of wind chimes filled the air, clinking in a delicate but frenetic melody. Inside the gaping maws of the rectangular shafts, chiming trinkets sparkled in the rising sun.
Nickel ran over the roof, passing the twisting shafts snaking around it. He ran along a curving wall formed by the shafts, his ears tingling with the sound of wind chimes flitting from the gaping, pockmarked openings. He barely noticed their intricate shapes and patterns, welded to form letters of a cuneiform Nickel assumed to be of the Thraíha language. The trinkets were held together by string and rope in weblike matrices, spinning with the trinkets as points of cohesion, supporting the structures.
“Chung jurra! Chung jurra…”
Nickel found himself at an intersection of two lines of shafts meeting at a narrow opening. A bulky protrusion in the shafts on the right stuck out where Nickel stood.
“Hurry!” rasped a distant voice. “We must meditate before the hunt!” The winds thickened, and the chimes jangled around Nickel in a swarming melody.
The Thraíha were nowhere to be seen. Nickel ran around the protruding shaft, searching for them. Stepping into the narrow opening, he found himself in another open space surrounded by interweaving tunnels, their encircling rectangular plates punctured by more gaping holes, jagged along their edges, filled with melodious trinkets, their sounds lilting from one octave to another, often playing against each other in a rippling rhythm.
The trinkets were bright flashes of reflected light amidst the darkened, rusty shafts. He paid more attention to their patterns and shapes. Sharp protrusions ran along their tops. Their faces were inset with patterned marks of colors, flashing and darkening as they flitted away from the sun, revealing finer details of their engravings and embossed patterns. The rough edges of a crumbling texture spoke of a handicraft that Nickel could only imagine in the Thraíha.
The faces flitted to and fro, shaking in the wind, brightening and darkening as they shook on their pendants, jiggling the chains and beads hanging below, creating gentle but fast music.
Nickel found himself a few steps from a large opening in the shafts. He ducked under the jagged opening, avoiding the sharp edges of the cleaved metal. The delicate tremors of the instruments hanging beside his head chimed in his ears. Several strings of beads brushed his cheek, forming a flatter musical note as the beads slithered against each other on Nickel’s skin.
Expecting to feel the oncoming wall, Nickel was surprised at the length of the gaping hole in the shaft. More darkness beckoned where he expected a surface jutting in front of him, creating vertigo that threatened to topple him.
New clusters of jangling music emerged in the darkness, unseen but resounding from various points within the shafts, hanging diagonally to Nickel from the right and left.
Nickel stepped in that direction, walking to the right, stopping when he felt the pain of remonstrance at not finding the Thraíha. Where did they go? Nickel turned around, finding another opening tucked away in a corner before him, spilling light onto the edges of the wind chimes to the right. More pressingly, what was this place? And why was Nickel drawn here?
He stepped closer to the new wind chimes, despite the growing alarm at leaving the Thraíha behind. A tingling sensation and a patch of goosebumps rose over his flesh. The tingling slithered over the nape of his neck, even after the chill of the goosebumps had settled.
He hadn’t had that lingering sensation since his dreams of the singing sorceress. A growing flare of constriction rose through his chest, threatening him with the fear of becoming overwhelmed by another vision or similar trance. Yet nothing came, no vision sweeping him away from the earth and the dank atmosphere of the foggy canyons. Even as the tingling sensation remained, slithering over the nape of his neck, threatening to course over his spine but never going past mild tremors that started to slide down his neck onto the small of his back, but never actually making it down.
The music was a collection of islands in space, rippling with a rising timbre, lilting and soft, before jangling in a loud crashing note, deep and striking. The notes fell at different paces across the darkness, each cluster of hanging wind instruments finding their way to the crashing sounds at different times.
The wind instruments closest to Nickel to the right were beginning their expanding rise in their music as the beads and chains expanded outwards on their strings, driven apart by their resounding crash just moments prior.
Nickel could discern the features of one of the trinkets holding the musical matrix together, the largest in fact; a large copper pin. It was carved with a round head and two large wings stretching outwards to the left and right. Narrow depressions were curved along the wings so the viewer might discern feathers.
Father Hawk.
The beads and trinkets withdrew into one another, sliding over each other as their strings and chains brought them together.
Rough footsteps scraped outside the opposite end of the shaft, sending skidding echoes through the faint opening behind the wind instruments. Shadows formed outside the opening, causing the faint light coming through to withdraw, darkening the wind instruments further.
The razor-edged echoes of grunts and murmurs sounded at the lip of the opening.
“Where did he go?” came the voice of a Thraíha, a deep voice heaved through the opening, only the initial words heard before the rest were obscured by another crashing melody of the wind instruments’ trinkets rustling against each other in a loud, chiming melody.
Nickel swallowed, slowly testing the ground he walked over, gauging its surface for a reasonable path towards the light, free from any unseen obstruction. He wasn’t Farrul. He couldn’t leave them behind or make them search for him. If Farrul was as unreliable as he was, Nickel could only see him continuing to be. He had to show the Thraíha that he, Nickel, could be relied on.
Nickel walked faster as the ground proved itself to be smoother in the darkness. He couldn’t hear his footsteps amidst the cacophony of crashing music behind him.
Did he want to leave Farrul behind? The thought sent a pang of guilt through him. No, he wanted to distinguish himself from Farrul.
A loud grunting of sounds came through the shaft of light, rendered indecipherable by the crash and melodies behind him, erupting in a jangling chain reaction of music.
Why did he want to distinguish himself from Farrul to the Thraíha? To prove he was better and more fit for the quest to Hedonim? No, no, he reassured himself, feeling unsure of his own footing, physically and mentally.
Running through the shaft, he felt like he was rushing to the afternoon bell from recess during his long-ago school days. But he wasn’t. That was then, before he’d left the Ether. He was running back to the Thraíha, not the proctors of the engineering corps he’d once belonged to with his father.
Yet, he had to compete. He had to show, or else his labors would be for naught. And after losing everything, becoming a recluse on a hovercraft, and finding unexpected shelter and harshly defined social rules and routines within the Thraíha, Nickel couldn’t let the social ladders slide past—
A sharp flare expanded over the toes of his right foot as it hit a rising object that blended into the darkness. Nickel closed his eyes, feeling a burning sensation grow all over his feet. His knees buckled and Nickel found himself falling to his toes, grabbing a hold of his right foot. He clamped down on the foot, sliding his fingers away from the front of his foot awash in its throes of bristling sensitivity.
The shrill sound of the grunting Thraíha language echoed around the walls near Nickel, warbling and resounding across their surfaces. He was closer to the opening of light within the shaft but only saw darkness through his closed eyes, pressed onto his knee.
“If you don’t come, Nickel, you’ll lose your hunting privileges!” came the sharp deep voice of the Thraíha leader. “No quest, no extra food!”
The rising melodies of music had fallen, allowing for the Thraíha’s words to become audible. Interrupted from all thoughts, Nickel could barely brace himself to hear the import of the Thraíha’s words. He tried very hard to make it through quick enough, with only a bruised foot to reward him.
Farrul had probably left down the shaft by now. Farrul couldn’t go on the hunt without Nickel. The thought seemed to drag his left leg across the floor as he extended his knees. He’d lead the Thraíha astray just as he was trying to lead Nickel astray. He needed to come out on top, lead the way as he couldn’t at the engineering corps.
His foot continued to throb and ache, flashes of pain that distracted from his thoughts. He fed himself consolations, trying to understand where his thoughts were coming from, where they were going.
He shifted his weight as he walked, slowing down to readjust his motion.
Staggering on his left leg, it hit an object lightly, pushing a part of it away from him. The object fell off the one below which only shifted slightly. Nickel stepped back, frowning. He stared at the ground as a clinging noise echoed from down the roof, weakly drumming outside the shaft wall.
“Gthu, rrororoh!” shrieked a Thraíha far across the roof.
“Kfff mmhuh jurrah aí!” responded another Thraíha with a deeper voice.
Were they leaving without him? The shafts of light coming through were warmer and brighter, illuminating the interior walls of the ventilation shaft, wrought with its rusted pallets and protruding lines. Fuzzy protrusions of ice coated the walls inside the shaft. Nickel would be able to see the rest of the men as they traveled down the temple in their elevator shaft. The light was now strong enough. But would he be able to see how they went down the shaft?
If he was left alone up here, he’d be stuck without a way to—
His left foot hit the objects again, sending them shifting away. A soft clattering and gentle fluttering caught Nickel’s ears, prompting him to look down.
He’d hit a collection of books and binders. The books had been stacked on top of one another, but they’d fallen, now strewn across the floor, a few lying lopsided against one another.
God knows what those are.
There was a clanging noise of metal objects hitting one another, one after the other. The elevator platform, no doubt. Nickel couldn’t tell if it was being summoned from the depths of the temple or if it was being lowered into the lower parts, carrying the Thraíha without him.
Either way, its sounds and their raised concerns were a dull chatter playing at the back of Nickel’s mind. The dusty leathery surface of the books before him caught his attention, reveling in their mystery.
Why were there books inside the shaft? Books were from the Past World, from Nickel’s world. The Thraíha were an oral culture, speaking from inscriptions in stone and loose collections of parchment made from leaves. That was all that Nickel had seen of them inside their encampments and huts.
Nickel squatted, bending his knees, ignoring the pain as he pressed on his foot. He extended his right foot, letting it rest on the heel, keeping his left leg bent, situated on the floor. He grabbed the first book, closest to him, rubbing its cover, feeling the weathered indentations running over the surface, the engravings torn at the edges, caked in grime at certain parts.
Footsteps started outside the shaft. Sitting low, Nickel could see two men standing outside the opening, one with his back to the opening, standing a few feet outside while another stood in front of him, several feet away from the shaft.
“Eeerra, muhkakee,” rasped the man several feet away.
“Hussé, huusse, muhreé,” responded the man with his back to Nickel.
Nickel’s heart began to hammer. He looked away from the men, back down at the books, rubbing the spine of the one he held, moving closer to the books and the wall, to conceal himself from the two men outside, blending in the darkness.
His fingers quivered, feeling the rough worn surface of the spine, its leather filled with bits and pieces of crumbling material, chewed by the weathering of air, wind, and time. The last time he’d seen a book was before he’d been plugged into the hovercraft. Before the Ether Realms equipment had been integrated. He was seven or eight?
The time and age seemed negligible to him. Fear and awe struck at him, his eyes unable to leave the cluttered books. He shifted his left knee further into the pile, stooping over them. He found artifacts of a pre-Ether time, a time he’d known, but was slipping away in his memory as that past in his early childhood moved further away.
What was this temple, this building? Nickel cracked open the book in his hands, revealing pages darkened by stains, elsewhere filled with countless words, more words than his mind could process at once, line after line in a sea of text.
These words. English. His own language jumped out at him, an oasis of inscribed words, line after line.
He scrambled through the pages, finding more of the same.
These artifacts, the building itself. The architecture was unlike the huts and stone structures of the Thraíha encampment. They all climbed the canyon rock, high enough to meet the skyline of empty, broken spires and walls that loomed over the West of the Thraíha encampment, “barriers left by the Past World.” Yet the temple was isolated amidst the rock outcroppings. Nickel had seen it wasn’t a peak, but a rusty appendage of a building wedged inside the rock. It was only at the elevation he was at that Nickel could see a vast emptiness of air around it below the roof.
What was this building? Nickel picked up another book lying to the side, letting the first one fall off his lap, cluttering on the floor next to the rest of the books. A title was embossed on the cover of the second book:
“Nuclear Energy.”
“He’s inside the wind tunnel,” rasped the man standing farthest from Nickel outside the shaft. Startled, Nickel’s fingers loosened around the book and he snapped his head up, staring wide-eyed at the light coming through the slanted diagonal opening across the shaft wall.
The man standing with his back to him shifted on his feet, turning around, looking over the wind tunnel, his gaze drifting below to Nickel. The wind instruments chimed louder again, their freefall of music broken.
“What are you doing in there?” he called to Nickel in a quizzical tone. Nickel started shifting his legs, rummaging the books on the floor. He stooped over, pushing the books against the wall, trying to hide them. “Are you trying to lose your hunting privileges?”
Nickel grabbed the book with the “Nuclear Energy” title, gripping its narrow spine and shoving it underneath his robe.
“We can still see you in there,” the man called. “The hunt will start without you.” Nickel ripped open the collar of his tunic, letting the string clasps pop free.
“I’m sorry!” Nickel called. Bending over more, Nickel squatted on both feet and started to stand up as he shoved the book inside his tunic, against the bare skin of his chest. “I got lost in the wind tunnels.” His voice echoed dully against the wind tunnel walls.
“You mustn’t go inside the wind tunnels!” said the man standing directly outside the opening. He started walking closer. “It’s a sacred space only for priests.” Nickel tried to bring the opened edges of his tunic together again, reconnecting with their string clasps. But they had already been quite undone. He pressed them as close together as he could. When the strings still stretched unbound, he tried pulling at one of their hanging strands, only pulling it looser, falling even further out of the clasp, loosening his tunic even more.
“You’re lucky Murrak didn’t see you in there,” the man said, stepping even closer to the opening. Nickel shoved the book further back around his ribs, pushing the book from the outside of his tunic.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” Nickel said, as unassuming a tone as he could muster. He stood up, still leaning against the wall of the shaft.
“He’d have your hunting privileges revoked,” the man said, standing just outside the opening, his frame blocking the light coming through. His head was cocked to the side, peering down at Nickel and frowning at his movements.
Nickel frantically rummaged the two folds of his tunic hanging loose, the sleeves of his robes tucked underneath. He still bent over, barely stepping over the edge of the shaft’s wall and floor. He slipped a leather pouch on his belt through the edges of his tunic tucked around his waist, slipping it underneath his tunic, around his rib cage, next to the book, to make the lump under his tunic less defined. Feeling the gaze of the man, Nickel tucked the two ends of his robes together as close as he could, tying their leather clasps together, close enough to his chest to cover the protruding objects as best as he could.
Please leave a comment or question about any character, dynamic, setting, or other story element that intrigued you, as your feedback inspires me to add greater depth.
Ongoing Early Draft of 2200 Blues © 2020 by G.R. Nanda is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 
G.R. Nanda 